What should we do to prevent AIDS

6 Promising Routes to HIV Prevention

The report, released here at the XVI International AIDS Conference, surveyed the state of research on six promising approaches for the prevention of HIV: male circumcision; cervical barriers such as diaphragms; HIV "prevention pills"; suppression of herpesherpes, which raises the risk of contracting HIV threefold; topical microbicides; and HIV vaccines.

1. Male Circumcision

A trial of over 3,000 young men showed that those who are circumcised are about 60% less likely to be infected with HIV, compared with those who are not circumcised, says Gita Ramjee, PhD, of the HIV Prevention Research Unit of the South Africa Medical Research Unit.

And another study predicted that widespread implementation of male circumcision could avert 2 million new infections in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

But circumcisions must be safely performed by trained health providers -- something that is lacking in m